Chris Stapleton Rides His Own Country Music Wave

LOS ANGELES — A few minutes before showtime on Monday night, there was a hubbub outside Chris Stapleton’s tour bus, parked just around the corner from the El Rey Theater here. A few people jumped off and began to make their way to the entrance. One of them fixed his attention on a mannequin in a store window, loudly encouraging his friends to look.

If you were inclined to see just what the din was about, you would have noticed that the mannequin enthusiast was Justin Timberlake. One of his buddies: Pharrell Williams.

Two weeks ago, at the 49th annual Country Music Association Awards, Mr. Timberlake performed an eight-minute duet with Mr. Stapleton. It was an enjoyable mismatch, something like an eel and a lion in a back and forth seduction routine. But that wasn’t the high point of Mr. Stapleton’s night: He also won three awards, for new artist of the year, male vocalist of the year and album of the year, for “Traveller” (Mercury Nashville), his solo debut.

Since then, “Traveller” has been the No. 1 album in the country, selling approximately 250,000 copies, more than twice what he’d sold since the album’s May release, according to Nielsen Music.

This is a striking turn of events for a singer almost completely at odds with the denuded country mainstream. Mr. Stapleton is a ferocious vocalist, with a scraped-up but muscular Southern rock howl that’s the stuff of the Allman Brothers or Lynyrd Skynyrd. His songwriting favors interior depth over frivolity. There’s no breeze in his music.

At the El Rey, the sold-out final show of his tour, he used that voice selectively, and with gale force. Often he starts songs in a low, gritty moan, and restraint is part of his arsenal: The explosion is coming — it’s just a matter of when. Sometimes, the music behind him doesn’t erupt when he does, which causes a disconnect, but generally when he chooses to open up his voice, it’s like an earthquake tearing the ground apart. On songs like “Sometimes I Cry,” with which he closed his set, he was savage from the beginning, not letting up until he ended the song abruptly and walked offstage.

“Sometimes I Cry” is one of the standouts on “Traveller,” but it could have had a different life altogether. It was originally intended for a previous album, which was shelved after an initial single faltered. “Changeovers happen and people have opinions,” Mr. Stapleton said, ever diplomatic, in an interview in his tour bus Monday afternoon. Of “Traveller,” he added, “All I really wanted out of it was to be out.”

Before his solo career, he fronted the SteelDrivers, a bluegrass group, and the Jompson Brothers, a Southern rock outfit. “I don’t know that my voice ever makes sense anywhere, necessarily,” he explained. “I would sing bluegrass music and I don’t fit in there; I would sing rock music and I’m probably a little too hillbilly for that. And country, I’m too much rock ’n’ roll for there sometimes.”

Adulation from the Nashville establishment aside, Mr. Stapleton is still something of a man without a home. “I didn’t used to be O.K. with it,” he said. “Everybody gets through a phase where it’s, ‘Ah, if I could just sound just like Vince Gill.’ Then you figure out that you have your own voice, whether you like it or not, and that’s what you should stick with.”

That voice — one that would have placed him squarely in the country mainstream four decades ago — has more in common with artists like the dark country stoic Jamey Johnson, or the quietly radical traditionalist Sturgill Simpson. (They all share a producer, Dave Cobb.)

Until his award-filled night, Mr. Stapleton had been piecing together loose coalition of forward-looking tastemakers, anti-mainstream dissenters and old-style purists — a group with limited reach. “Some of those folks were at country radio, not enough of them to be as impactful as we wanted it to be,” Mr. Stapleton said, “but there were plenty of people that were helpful there, so that still can be part of the puzzle.” (On the heels of his wins, a new single, “Nobody to Blame,” is being promoted to country radio, the place where difference goes to die.)

The victories for Mr. Stapleton — an artist who represents a version of the genre that everyone pledges affection for, but few practice — felt like a sort of penance for a town that perpetually wonders if it’s lost its way.

Mr. Stapleton is, if not circumspect, at least Zen about what the events of the last two weeks might mean for his career. (Who knows if Mr. Williams will be free the next time he’s in town?) He speaks of music in terms of swinging pendulums and wheels that always come back around. Regardless of whether things take off, he said, “We’ll keep doing what we’re doing over here.”

At the El Rey, that meant blues guitar; indulging a shouted request for “Freebird”; songs about relationships broken beyond repair; and making intense googly eyes with his wife, Morgane, who sings with him, as she does — forcefully — on “Traveller.”

More than a decade ago, Ms. Stapleton — then Morgane Hayes — was signed to Arista Nashville. Though she has had success as a songwriter, she has not released an album of her own. “She wouldn’t be out here doing this if it weren’t for me,” Mr. Stapleton said. “She doesn’t have the compulsion to do it like I do. She helps me with my compulsion.”

On most of his songs at Monday’s show, Ms. Stapleton sang sympathetic harmony with her husband. They were clustered close to each other, two people at ease with shared space.

Midway through, he ceded the spotlight to her for a sultry, churning take on “You Are My Sunshine.” Ms. Stapleton was like a lightning bolt, Mr. Stapleton like viscous syrup. They’re scarily effective as a pair — a duets album is really in order — but alone, Ms. Stapleton is as much of a revelation as her husband is. If Nashville remains intent on righting its wrongs, here’s one more hiding in plain sight.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: After Wins, Country Star Rides a Wave. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe